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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22641808">heroes for ghosts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky'>transstevebucky</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Walking Dead (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Second Person, Unrequited Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:21:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,019</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22641808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You look for him for months. Years. You talk with people and you visit and you say <i>I’m fine, I’m better out here, </i>and it doesn’t matter that they know you’re lying. You don’t stay long enough for them to pull the truth out of you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>heroes for ghosts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this fic sponsored by daryl living in the woods for six fucking years because rick was gone and twd trying to tell me that's some heterosexual bro living. </p><p>title from wish you were here by pink floyd</p><p>warnings for self harm, blood discussion, canon-typical depression.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fire fits in a cupped palm, held and nurtured and tucked between ribs for safekeeping. Pull out the roots and salt the earth; burn what’s left behind.</p><p>There’s not much left behind at all, any more, and you don’t see the point in sticking around.</p><p>Death clogs your throat like a physical obstruction. You taste the bitter tang of blood and think <em>home</em>.</p><p>The woods, as always, claim you back. Their arms reach towards you, fingers of bark curling around your bruised skin. <em>Home</em>, wind whispers into your ear, <em>you are home</em>.</p><p>Nails get scrubbed in creeks and traps get set with practised hands.</p><p>The fire heating your bones burns dim and flickering; it may go out. You don’t know what will happen if it does.</p><p>Tarps get pulled between trees and you listen to rainfall with your chin tucked between your knees. You see the gun, glinting silver, smeared with blood. A flash of light and burning heat.</p><p>You wonder if he is what gave you all that flame. If you’re the thing that gave it back to him.</p><p>You look for him for months. Years. You talk with people and you visit and you say <em>I’m fine</em>, <em>I’m better out here</em>, and it doesn’t matter that they know you’re lying. You don’t stay long enough for them to pull the truth out of you.</p><p>Sometimes people come to you. Aaron and Jesus and Michonne and Carol and Maggie. They arrive with sacks of supplies. You say <em>thank you</em>, you use them. You watch their backs when they leave and every time they ask you to go with them you remember a bridge, a bloodied man, a brother.</p><p><em>I’m better out here</em>.</p><p>A pup quivers, cold and sick in the hearth. You could kill him and put him out of his misery. You could eat him, for as little meat as he has, anything is sustenance. You’ve eaten less, done worse for less. Crushed throats under your hand just to make the hollows of your spine stop aching. It would be kinder, almost, to kill the thing clean.</p><p>You nurse him back to health. You go to Hilltop, you say; <em>need help for this thing</em>, and it doesn’t matter that you won’t stay when they all look at you like <i>thank god, thank fucking god</i>.</p><p>Maggie holds you and lets you cry into her shoulder and you visit Glenn’s grave and tell him sorry, again and again, you think about a parking lot burial and blond hair and blood and it hurts. It’s been such a long time and it hurts, it burns, it feels like fingers tearing inside of you and hollowing you out.</p><p>The fire is out. The fire’s been out a long time. You coax the coals and wonder if your ribs are enough of a firebreak, any more. You wonder if, this time, there will be anything left when it razes the ground.</p><p>You wonder if it would be a bad thing if there wasn’t.</p><p>The dog is good. He’s healthy and strong and you train him to be smart. He alerts you to the dead and to the living. He follows you without fear. You feed him, you tell him <em>good boy.</em> You give him a home and think about a man with blue eyes and bow-legs.</p><p>“His name was Rick,” you tell him, scratching between soft ears. “And I loved him.”</p><p>The dog presses its head into your palm and whines.</p><p>There are breaks in the norm, over the years. Scars and burns and more agony. You watch a child grow and think of a father you could never find, dead or alive. You leave. You return. You leave, again. </p><p>Over and over and over and over, you leave. It hurts to stay. It hurts to go. It hurts to <em>breathe</em>.</p><p>You have known grief your entire life. It smells like smoke and honey and affection. Like love and beatings and copper. </p><p>Something inside of you is cracked. Maybe always has been. For a while, you thought -maybe. </p><p>Maybe this home stays.</p><p>But home lives in the seams of your body. Home lives in the quiet moments after blood spills. Home lives in stripes on your back and a body unfound and a life unlived. It sits so far away and so close and so utterly untouchable.</p><p>Your hands shake. More scars, more cuts, more burns. But they are yours, they are the only thing you’ve got. </p><p>When you visit they see the marks and the keloids and they know but they don’t pry the jaws of honesty open with a crowbar. They hold you tight and press close and your bones feel loose and too-tight and you back away and sleep under the stars, and everything hurts everything hurts everything hurts.</p><p>“You can stay.” His voice is soft and small and you watch him across the shadowed grass. Blue eyes and a beard well-kept and trimmed.</p><p>
  <em>His beard, it was trimmed. There’s more going on there.</em>
</p><p>“I can’t.” The dog nuzzles into your leg and you bury your hands in the softest thing you’ve got and you watch a hand reach towards you and pull back a moment before it touches your skin. “I’m better alone.”</p><p>“You were better with him,” he says, and you recoil.</p><p>It’s true. It hurts it hurts it hurts but fuck, Christ, it’s true. You were better with him. He taught you to be better. He made you better, and now you’ve left everything he taught you behind and what the fuck are you doing, nine months out of the year? </p><p>You’re killing yourself nice and slow and you’re saying -it doesn’t count, if there’s not gunmetal in my mouth. It doesn’t count if there’s not thick rope wrapped around my neck. If my wrists are intact. </p><p>You were never a coward until the world cracked open and took him back.</p><p>“Yeah.” You swallow. “I’ll stay.”</p><p>You were better with him, after all.</p><p>Maybe you’ll be better with someone else, again.</p><p>Fire fits in a cupped palm. So you close the hand and make a fist. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i'm gaydaryl on tumblr and gayjaaryl on twitter, should you wanna talk to me about anything!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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